


Walpurgis Night

by nidorina



Category: Mahou Shoujo Madoka Magika | Puella Magi Madoka Magica
Genre: Gen, Original Character-centric
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-11
Updated: 2013-10-11
Packaged: 2017-12-29 01:48:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,399
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/999433
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nidorina/pseuds/nidorina
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Two young girls prepare to die.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Walpurgis Night

**Author's Note:**

> Wrote this back on April 30th for Walpurgis Night, and didn't even so much as edit it because I wanted to get it posted before the holiday was over, but I reread it recently and realized how much I liked it!
> 
> Super self-indulgent fic of [Claire's](http://monocle-power.tumblr.com/) and my OCs—[Kiyomi](https://charahub.com/character/58705/Kiyomi-Mana) and [Xiang](http://birdseed.dreamwidth.org/2518.html), respectively. Skimming their bios might give you a better idea of what's going on but I tried to make it accessible to strangers to the characters, too.

The newscaster across the airwaves blurts out phrases through their radio like “hurricane force,” “record-breaking,” “state of emergency” in between the wail of static. Kiyomi's mother leans towards the coffee table to hear him over the storm, and grumbles, “ _I_ could have told you that.” A gale of wind sends the downpour against the living room window; rain clatters against the glass as sharp as bullets fired upon them, and she goes unheard.

Kiyomi rolls over on the floor, draws her knees up to her chin. “Dad, Mama,” she says; a fortunate moment of relative calm outside permits her to be heard despite the strain it takes to speak. “You know I love you.”

“Of course,” her mom says, slowly, and their attentions are taken again when another voice breaks through the radio.

She squints at her watch, struggles to read it through the reflection of the candlelight—there are mere minutes left and her heart wriggles up into her throat. The runes engraved in her ring are a reminder of what path she has put herself on, so she runs her finger over it again and again and spells out her name in her head.

A flash of lightning is a floodlight through their window. She clutches her hand against her chest. Her heart beats with the racing rhythm of the rain.

“I'm going to my room.” She springs to her feet. Her fingers slip between and away from each other behind her back.

“What?”

“Maybe do some homework,” she says, “or just sleep—the storm'll just get better from here, right?”

She feels the burn of skeptic stares on her skin when the firelight doesn't make her parents' faces clear enough to see it. It's easier that way.

“If we haven't gone to a shelter already, we're not gonna, right?” ( _Paranoid_ , her father had scoffed, _every last one of 'em, never seen rain in their lives_ ) “But—yeah, yeah. G'night, Mama, Dad. I love you.”

Their tentative farewells barely carry over her feet thumping the whole way upstairs. _Goodbye_ , she thinks over and over again; _goodbye._

She pulls her bedroom door closed, locks it behind her—should she leave a note? She'll be okay. She'll be home before she knows it. Kiyomi stuffs the plush toys under her blanket, arms jerking as she flings and shoves them into a lump that could be her sleeping form if seen in the blackout.

 _It's time_ , says her watch. Kiyomi breathes in, prepared to plunge into the sea. The light of the gem on her ring washes over her. When it fades she staggers forward. She knows this by heart because this _is_ her heart; why isn't it natural this one time?

She clutches the soul gem dangling from its pendant, the one constant left in this world (if even that).

Kiyomi pulls the window open and soars out into the sky, a violet streak of lightning in the storm.

• • •

It's the same as any other day, only with the sound of the rainstorm eclipsing the sound of the generator's hum, and the both of them left as background noise. No one minds Xiang as she wanders the house, the only activity among the sleeping and the occupied. Upstairs, downstairs—she wraps ribbons around the twin buns she'd balled her hair, blacker than the night outside, into with all the care she'd give to something she feared the fragility of; makes sure every item in her room has a sense of belonging in its placement; leaves no note or final word to the father who'd never notice otherwise.

At most, she spares a final glance into her brother's room. He stirs in his bed just as she cracks open his door, and she shuts it just as soon. The breath she hadn't realized she was holding lets go at the same time a thunderclap shakes even the foundation of the home (or maybe, maybe that's just her).

But she walks down the hallway with her spine rod-straight, and the grave line of her mouth just as firm. It is only when her hand grasps the stair railing that she hears, behind her, a meek voice call over the sound of the downpour—“Sis?”

“Yongrui,” she says, and can feel her brick resolve crumble under the gale. Instinct calls up her sisterly tone, but it's a conscious struggle to keep its gravity. “Go back to bed.”

“Where are you going, sis?”

Her fingers stiffen at the railing.

“I'll be back soon,” she murmurs as she approaches him. They speak Chinese to each other because no one will tell them not to, because it is all they have left of the home taken from them.

He takes one of her hands, and it is still. She brushes her fingers over his cheek with the other, then kisses that same spot. “Don't tell Dad,” she adds, and they giggle at the idea.

“Why are you going?” he asks. “Sis, it's raining.”

 _I did this for you_ , she wants to say, _I'm leaving for you_. “I need to meet someone,” she says instead. “We have something important to do together.”

“Can I help?”

“You can help by going back to bed,” she says. His eyebrows knit together and she kisses his cheek again. “I love you.”

“I love you too, Sis.”

“Bed, okay? I'll be back before you wake up again.”

“Promise?”

 _It will all be for you_ , she thinks, _I'm sorry I did this for you_. “Promise,” she says first, but the sound of thunder swallows her wilting voice whole. Again, “Promise,” with rod-straight conviction and resolve of bricks rebuilt.

Xiang waits until he has disappeared into his room again, and she is gone. Her steps echo in the wide, vacant corridor, but not so far that anyone comes. The front door closes and locks behind her and she sprints against the wind, lets her soul bathe her in all the strength that she has left mid-step, and rockets into the air, a crimson bolt against the night.

Xiang is the first to alight on the bridge overpass they'd agreed on, but she can see the faint aura of Kiyomi's magic through the clouds. Seconds later she lands, stumbles over her own steps, bounds forward and snatches Xiang's hands in her own.

“I almost didn't make it,” she pants, spitting out hair the color of lilacs windswept into her lips.

“You came to here,” Xiang says in broken Japanese. Her hands don't pull away, but they don't return the grasp. “And I am thankful.”

“Oh—” pulls hair strands out of her eyes and teeth, “—how could I let you fight alo—”

Laughter resonates over the storm clouds, a shrieking echo, and they turn.

The procession breaks through the fog: elephants, giraffes, horses in the color of carnivals, draped in fabric patterned by something ancient and exotic; carts that make stands for things with bodies of elven stature which carry oversized mascot heads of mice and chicken upon their shoulders; circus streamers and flags billow out behind them.

The parade of Her barrier thinks nothing of a pair of Puella Magi; it splits down its middle and marches around them instead. A purple pony with mouse's ears leans to the left so the parasol twirling on is forehead tilts away from them. A crowned goblin with the blue head of an elephant pulls a wheeled float behind it, cheering with the chicken-headed thing inside as it waves its scepter.

Against the gray sky directly ahead of them, She is no taller than a thumbnail.

At all sides of them is confetti fluttering and flinging in the wind. This is what Her presence has reduced whole buildings to.

( _Five_.)

The parade thins out beside them. Her laughter is at a fever pitch, and She is so near that they can make out the lace lining Her dress, blue as sea.

( _Four._ )

The apocalypse, the Walpurgis Night comes towards them in the form of a woman, a _girl_ cut from the top half of an hourglass. They are not even sixteen; they have never seemed so small.

( _Three._ )

Kiyomi's hand is in in Xiang's before either of them even think about it. Xiang squeezes it back, the only constant left in this world.

( _Two._ )

“What do you think happens after we die?” asks Kiyomi; her voice scratches through her dried throat.

( _One._ )

But Xiang doesn't answer.


End file.
